Quick and Easy Christmas Card

One of the groups I belong to issued a challenge at the beginning of the year to make at least 5 Christmas Cards each month.  This way you would have a good start if not all of your Christmas cards done with out having to find a way to cram them in at the last minute.   So each month I have dutifully made between 5 and 10 cards, depending on the time each card took.  This is the card that I made this month. 

This stamp set is one that will be available in the Holiday Mini Catalog starting tomorrow.  I was a lucky winner of the prize patrol and won this stamp set, a wheel and a fabric bundle.  I have not had a chance to play with the fabric yet, but I was impressed with it during convention and it feels great in person, it is really high quality stuff.

I ended up doing two versions of this card.  One with Navy ribbons and one with Cherry Cobbler ribbons on the bells. 

 

It is really simple and easy to mass produce, I actually ended up making 15 of these, 10 navy and 5 cherry.  The glitter is the new Champagne glass glitter also in the holiday mini.  I just squeezed on a line of Tombo Multipurpose Adhesive and poured the glitter right into it.  And it worked great.  (You can also use crystal effects which was what I was going for but it walked away from my desk and is MIA at the moment.)  The oval where the sentiment is was the scallop oval bigshot die cut, that was cut in half.   Hope you enjoy! 

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Convention Swap Case

I ran out of swaps for convention way too soon.  I saw a swap that I just knew I had to case, but didn’t have one to swap for, so I jotted the sketch down to create at a later date.   I really wanted to use the new In Color Poppy Parade.  I was having the hardest time finding a pairing that I liked.  Luckily I had the new color coach in reach where I found this great color combo. 

The “hello” is from Teeny Tiny Wishes, the stamp says “hello baby” but I thought that the colors were a little too bold for a baby card so I just used my Not Quite Navy marker to ink just the one word.  I think that this would be great to use bigger and different sized circles but I have not yet purchased the big circle punches so I had to make due with my 1 3/8 inch punch, which did the job.  Thanks for stopping by.

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What to do when you have a mistake

All too often I have friends tell me that they like how their card turned out except for one little thing, or they were almost done and messed it up and threw it away.  WAIT!  Why would you throw it away?  Most of the time you can play around with it and fix it.  I decided to show you on this card what I did.

This was a card that I had made with out a greeting, so that I could use it at a moments notice.  I pulled out the “thank you” I wanted to use and went to stamp it.  As I was lifting up the stamp it faltered in my hand and I dropped it a little and ended up smearing the greeting.

Now I would never send a card like this but I needed to find a way to make it presentable in a short period of time.  All I needed to do was come up with another layering option to cover the mistake.  I was going to add some wide ribbon but then I couldn't figure out a good placement for the greeting.  So I used some punches and liked the way that it ended up.  Here is what the finished card looks like, and the recipient will never know that there was a mistake.  (Well in my case she will know because I just told her).

 

So next time you have a card that you think is ruined, take a second look and try to find a way to cover it up or fix it!  Have a Stamperific Weekend!

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Diva Coffee Break Designs Color Challenge #190

I really like working with the new 2 step Owl Punch from Stampin’ Up!  The little owl is just so cute and so easy to personalize.  One punch and you get all of the pieces you need. 

Last week’s color challenge at the Diva Blog was a really great one.  All of the colors come from the new brights collection.  I think that Stampin’ Up! really did a great job with the new color families this year.  I struggled to use my brights, and would have to force myself to make a card using those colors every once in a while.  Now I don't have that problem, and I never thought I would see old olive in the brights collection either. 

Here are my cute little love owls.  I plan to stash this one  away and use it to stick inside my husband’s lunch box.

Don't forget to participate in this week’s sketch challenge and add a link to your creation !  www.divacoffeebreakdesigns.blogspot.com

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Diva Coffee Break Designs Sketch Challenge

Well here I am again apologizing for not posting in more than a week.  Moments after posting my last post, and before fixing the rest of the posts to go live this month, I received an awful phone call letting me know that my grandfather who had a heart attack was in a coma and not expected to make it through the night.   So I quickly threw stuff back into suitcases and took off with the kids to head down to San Diego.  It has been rough on the family, especially my little 3 year old, he was dearly loved and will be greatly missed.

So it has been a while since I stamped, more than 2 weeks.  So when I sat down to work on this week’s Diva Challenge, I had a really hard time getting into the groove of things. I am not entirely happy with the card (especially since I put it together upside down, the card opens to the left not the right), but I felt the need to show that not everything I create is perfect.  I get a lot of people telling me that they can’t stamp as well as I do and that they are not creative.   Well I get ideas from all over the place, I do not come up with much all on my own, but take inspiration from things around me and other stampers as well.  Ok enough with the boring and on to the stamping. 

 

I was really in a funk on this one, and really missing a lot of my retired accessories.  All I need to do is get a little more stamping time in to get things spinning again.  Come back tomorrow and I will show you what I did with last weeks diva color challenge.  I did it before everything happened so it is a good one!

Thanks for stopping by.  Please head on over to the Diva Coffee Break Designs blog to check out some fantastic samples using this sketch. 

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Diva Coffee Break Designs #189

Well apparently I don't know the date.  I went out of town earlier this week and had several posts set up to go while I was gone but I set them up for September not August.  Opps.  Well here is the post that was supposed to go live on Wed. 

Welcome back for another fabulous Diva Sketch Challenge.  There have been some exciting things happening at the Diva Coffee Break Blog, we had some additions to the family.  We decided to expand the family and add quite a few new divas to get the creative juices flowing.  Head on over the to the blog to check out the new additions to the family and check out their talent!

Here is this weeks sketch

I had so many ideas for this one, it was hard to choose just one idea.  Here is what I ended up doing:

I am just loving the little owl punch.  I have been playing with scraps and have so many cute little owls.  I really have a lot.  I am thinking of turning them into bookmarks for my kids to take to school for their class mates.  I think it would be a fun way to start off the school year. 

Don’t forget to head over to the Diva Coffee Break Designs Blog to check out the samples that the other divas have made and to play along with us!

 

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Another great convention make and take

This year we had several great make and take projects at convention, I have already shown you a few of them and here is one more.  This is a great mini card (love note size) holder.  It is a great project for a make and take at a workshop, and that is exactly what I am going to use it for (except for changing the image and colors but really the same idea).  I am so excited to be hosting my first real workshop in over 5 years this month, and although it is a ways off I have already begun to prepare for it.  I am so excited.  Anyways back to the project we made at convention. The card holder on the left is made out of a small open ended envelope.  It holds the 3 love note cards as well as 3 envelopes.  It is great and simple and the smaller cards seem to be the rage right now.  They are so fun to gibe for any occasion.   To ink up the stamp we just used markers to create all of the different colors.  Hope you enjoy.

Stamps:  Simply Thanks

Ink:  Early Espresso, Daffodil Delight, Marina Mist and Real Red markers

Paper:   Daffodil Delight, Marina Mist, Real Red Whisper White and Brights DSP stack

Accessories:  Dimensionals, Daffodil Grosgrain, Small Open Ended Envelope

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Cute Name Card

This year at the Stampin’ Up! convention I was privileged to participate in a focus group.  It was a really neat experience.  They really do listen to us demos and try to do what is best for us.  But I cannot share any info discussed in the focus group with anyone, not even my husband.  (Which has really been hard to do.)  I cannot wait to see what comes about with what we discussed there.  When we got there the leader of the group, her name completely escapes me at the moment, yet I knew it when I sat down to type,  had made some really simple yet cute Name cards/ Place cards for us.  These would be so easy and fun to duplicate for any type of event, I am thinking of making similar ones for Thanksgiving.    The thing that really caught my eye was the antique brad.  Oh it is so stunning in person.  Here is a close up shot of the brad. 

It is just so detailed an pretty.  It is amazing how much better these things look in real life than they do in the catalog pages (although the catalogs are just beautiful, don't get me wrong) .  Before I thought that they were pretty, but now I HAVE to HAVE them. 

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OH Wow, Diva Coffee Break Designs #188

Can I just say, I LOVE how this card turned out.  I created this card last Thursday and it has been hard to hold on to it and not show it to you.  It is a super clean and simple card, but is a big wow card for me.  I just love it, I will have to make another one if I ever want to give it away, because I am keeping this one for me!

This week was a color challenge.  I wanted to really bring out the Cherry Cobbler but once I started creating things went a completely different direction as often happens.

 

I actually started making this car with solid color squares and putting the white bird on top but it just looked too stacked.  It is hard to describe, but although I liked it there was something that just didnt sit right with me, so I decided to punch the bird out of the color first and then punch that bird in the square.  Here is a close up shot so you can hopefully see what I am trying to describe. This was way much harder because you are limited in your punching because of the branch above the bird in the punch.  But I still love the way it turned out, it was so worth the extra hassle.    

 

Dont forget to play along with the divas with this week’s color challenge.

 

Stamps: Just Believe

Ink:  Craft White

Paper:  Whisper White, Early Espresso, Marina Mist, Daffodil Delight and Cherry Cobbler

Accessories:  White Embossing Powder, Dimensionals

Tools: 1 1/4 inch square punch, 1 3/8 inch square punch, 2 step bird punch, heat tool, embossing powder

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New (to me) 3-d challenge

I love doing 3d items, they are so fun to give away.  Since it has been a while since I have done one, I went on a hunt last night.  I found a weekly 3-d challenge on the Stampin’ Addicts website and decided to sit down and do this weeks challenge.  It was for a purse type card holder and they had all of the instructions right there free of charge. 
So here is what I came up with. 

This purse took me less than 20 minutes to assemble.  I was surprised at how fast it went together even though I kept it really simple.  Next I want to do a stepped up version and see how it turns out. 
Here is what it looks like open.  The cards on the inside were ones that were received as swaps from convention so I did not make those. 
There is room for several cards (1/2 inch total in thickness) on one side and the other can be fore envelopes.

Stamps:  Friends Never Fade
Ink:  Baja Breeze, Pear Pizzazz and Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Greenhouse Gala DSP, Baja Breeze, Pear Pizzazz, Whisper White and Chocolate Chip
Accessories:  Stampin DimensionalsPin It Now!